We use data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) to document the medical spending of Americans aged 65 and older. We find that medical expenses more than double between ages 70 and 90 and that they are very concentrated: the top 10% of all spenders are responsible for 52% of...

Although long-term care costs represent a substantial financial risk for retired households, few purchase insurance. Previous research shows that it would not be optimal for most single individuals to purchase coverage, due to crowd-out by the means-tested partial insurance provided by Medicaid....

We document and study international differences in both ownership and holdings of stocks, private businesses, homes, and mortgages among households aged fifty or more in thirteen countries, using new and comparable survey data. We employ counter-factual techniques to decompose observed...

This paper analyzes the effect of retirement on cognitive functioning using two large scale surveys. First, a longitudinal survey among older Americans allows controlling for individual heterogeneity and endogeneity of the retirement decision. Second, a cross-national European survey allows...

We show how the age profile of earnings, retirement rules and retirement behavior are tightly linked through the general equilibrium of the economy. Generous Social Security benefits financed by large Social Security taxes discourage human capital accumulation. In Social Security systems where...

This paper examines the association between lifetime income and old age mortality risk, referred to as the income-mortality gradient, in Italy during the 1980s and 1990s. We extend the literature by estimating the income-mortality gradient using Cox proportional hazard models, where the...